The Mikasa was built in England, and became the flagship of Admiral Togo's fleet when it defeated the Russian fleet prior to World War 1. It was already a museum piece set in concrete before WW2, yet the occupation forces after the war stripped all the guns and most of the superstructure. It was restored in the 60's, at least on the outside. The interior below decks is a museum and most of it bears little resemblance to what it originally looked like. Mikasa is in Yokosuka near the entrance of Tokyo Bay.
The photo is a stitch of four images panned horizontally.

The Mikasa was built in Manchester, England, and became the flagship of Admiral Togo's fleet when it defeated the Russian fleet prior to World War 1. It was already a museum piece set in concrete before WW2, yet the occupation forces after the war stripped all the guns and most of the superstructure. It was restored in the 60's, at least on the outside. The interior below decks is a museum and most of it bears little resemblance to what it originally looked like. Mikasa is in Yokosuka near the entrance of Tokyo Bay.

Ships built between 1880 and 1910 were a transitional form, between wooden sailing ships and modern ships.
They are always interesting - thank you for sharing this with us.

No ship-building was ever done in Manchester which is inland, albeit connected to the sea by a canal large enough to take smaller ships. Wikipedia says it was built by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness in the UK, a shipyard I often visited in the course of work. What a shame that some jobsworth thought that such an ancient ship needed demilitarising after WW2.

It is a shame too that no battleship of the British Royal Navy has been preserved later than HMS Warrior of 1860. HMS Belfast, in the Thames in London, is the only comparable museum ship, but is a light cruiser. You wonder how long they will last, being in water.

I don't think Canada ever had any battleships. We had three aircraft carriers one of which was sold to Gillette as scrap. If you use Gillette razors, you might have shaved with a piece of it. I'm guessing an aircraft carrier would make a pile of razors.HMCS Bonaventure - Wikipedia

No ship-building was ever done in Manchester which is inland, albeit connected to the sea by a canal large enough to take smaller ships. Wikipedia says it was built by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness in the UK, a shipyard I often visited in the course of work. What a shame that some jobsworth thought that such an ancient ship needed demilitarising after WW2.

The information at the site in Yokosuka said Manchester, possibly because it's the closest city to Barrow-in-Furness that Japanese people might recognise by name. The official website has a photo of it being launched at Vickers, but doesn't mention the location of the Vickers site. Part of my mother's family is from Manchester, so I was amused by a connection.

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It is a shame too that no battleship of the British Royal Navy has been preserved later than HMS Warrior of 1860. HMS Belfast, in the Thames in London, is the only comparable museum ship, but is a light cruiser. You wonder how long they will last, being in water.

I wonder how long the Missouri will last in Hawaii, since it's a floating museum. That's the only preserved battleship I've seen.

Ships built between 1880 and 1910 were a transitional form, between wooden sailing ships and modern ships.
They are always interesting - thank you for sharing this with us.

Thanks! Particularly the restored captain's quarters on the stern was reminiscent of the equivalent on wooden ships like HMS Endeavour, now that you mention it.
Modern ships wouldn't have the captain's quarters in such a vulnerable location.

---------- Post added 11-01-19 at 11:08 AM ----------

Originally posted by normhead

I don't think Canada ever had any battleships. We had three aircraft carriers one of which was sold to Gillette as scrap. If you use Gillette razors, you might have shaved with a piece of it. I'm guessing an aircraft carrier would make a pile of razors.HMCS Bonaventure - Wikipedia

Cool! The amount of steel in a ship would make a heck of a lot of razors. I'd never heard of that. The only similar thing which comes to mind was making military medals from the bronze of cannon.

---------- Post added 11-01-19 at 11:12 AM ----------

A little piece of trivia was that the name on the stern was written right to left in hiragana (sakami) which confused me when I saw it! These days, anything written horizontally in Japanese is left to right. As far as I know, text written vertically is still top to bottom right to left. Books in Japan have the spines on the opposite side, so to us they look like they are read back to front.

Well there was HMS Canada of 1915 ( Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre - Wikipedia ) which was a superb ship, somewhat faster and more heavily armed than the British super-Dreadnoughts at the time and only bettered by the new "fast battleship" type of the Queen Elizabeth class. It passed to Chile in 1920 and survived until 1959. I am not sure it ever belonged to Canada though, or ever went there.

There were also the battlecruisers HMAS* Australia and HMS New Zealand in WW1, and they did belong to those then colonies, and it may be that Canada also made some contribution to the costs of "its" ship, I don't know. All three ships were at the Battle of Jutland and there is a story that the captain of HMS New Zealand wore a Maori garment for the battle. Battlecruisers then were faster and typically larger than battleships. The original battlecruiser type was made obsolete by the "fast battleship" type which combined both sets of attributes, after which the term came to mean a light battleship.

The Misaka was a pre-Dreadnought battleship, "Dreadnoughts" were launched from about 1905, "super-Dreadnoughts" from about 1912.

There were also the battlecruisers HMAS* Australia and HMS New Zealand in WW1, and they did belong to those then colonies

Ahem. Australia became an independent nation in 1901 and HMAS Australia was paid for by Australia. It did considerable service in defence of the UK. I would be very surprised if the Australian crews on any HMAS ship ever referred to it as HMS. What the admiralty might have used is something else perhaps.

Ahem. Australia became an independent nation in 1901 and HMAS Australia was paid for by Australia. It did considerable service in defence of the UK. I would be very surprised if the Australian crews on any HMAS ship ever referred to it as HMS. What the admiralty might have used is something else perhaps.

When constructed, Germany looked at her and decided to relinquish the Pacific Ocean.

The East Asia squadron based in China made an escape. Admiral Spee feared what that one ship could do to his Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Emden, Leipzig and Nurnberg.

Ahem. Australia became an independent nation in 1901 and HMAS Australia was paid for by Australia. It did considerable service in defence of the UK. I would be very surprised if the Australian crews on any HMAS ship ever referred to it as HMS. What the admiralty might have used is something else perhaps.

Indeed, and I should have checked my sources which also show that, although part of the British Grand Fleet (the North Sea fleet) at the time, HMAS Australia was not at the Battle of Jutland, being in for repairs after a collision with HMS New Zealand which was a sister ship. It seems that the New Zealand was properly termed "HMS" as it was actually a gift to Britain from New Zealand, while HMAS Australia remained in Australian ownership, but lent to the Royal Navy.

Ships built between 1880 and 1910 were a transitional form, between wooden sailing ships and modern ships.
They are always interesting - thank you for sharing this with us.

1861 is the start of the transition. That is the year HMS Warrior, the first armor-plated and iron hulled warship, was completed. When commissioned it made every other warship in the world obsolete. She herself was made obsolete within 10 years. In 1871 the HMS Devastation was completed, it was the first seagoing mast-less turret ship. Ships that followed in the period 1871-1906 are called Pre-Dreadnought battleships because Dreadnought, launched in 1906, made them obsolete...The term Dreadnought (Super-Dreadnought for ships with guns larger than 13.5 inches) was used to describe battleships up until the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The ships that were built after the London Naval Treaty of 1930 were known as Fast Battleships...